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Why are many PS3 games STILL not supporting 1080i/p?

There were millions of HDTVs sold that can't take 720p, I buoght a Sony 53" set five years ago that could not, and many high-def sets were still being sold 2-3 year ago that could not.

The people who bought these sets are just as deserving of years of usefulness as those PS3 owners that want the PS3 platform to last ten years or more. To this end, virtually every high-def source component other than the PS3 is capable of scaling 720p to 1080i.
 

xabi

Member
So just so I am clear. I have my PS3 settings so that 1080p is just checked. For CoD4, the TV says that it is getting a 1080p signal. Does the framerate/performance suffer as a result?

What about for the other games that only support 720p? What does the PS3 do with those games (I only have CoD4 so far)?
 

StuBurns

Banned
beermonkey@tehbias said:
There were millions of HDTVs sold that can't take 720p, I buoght a Sony 53" set five years ago that could not, and many high-def sets were still being sold 2-3 year ago that could not.

The people who bought these sets are just as deserving of years of usefulness as those PS3 owners that want the PS3 platform to last ten years or more. To this end, virtually every high-def source component other than the PS3 is capable of scaling 720p to 1080i.

But why should people rely on Sony to support it? Just because most HD devices have scaling doesn't mean PS3 should have to. It's also a question of how far back do you support, there have been analogue HDTV's since the seventies, are those people any less deserving then you?

It's buyer beware when you buy new tech, 1080i is now not a popular format, 720p has become the ubiquitous current HD format. Sony never promised upscaling.

xabi said:
So just so I am clear. I have my PS3 settings so that 1080p is just checked. For CoD4, the TV says that it is getting a 1080p signal. Does the framerate/performance suffer as a result?

What about for the other games that only support 720p? What does the PS3 do with those games (I only have CoD4 so far)?

The native resolution of a game doesn't change under any circumstances, so you won't be effecting the performance. But COD4 is only 720p (it's actually only 600p upscaled).
 
all I know is i have a Sony HDTV that I cant play my Sony Playstation 3 games in 720p on.

If Sony had never made any HDTVs that didn't support 720p, I could agree with the argument that they don't HAVE to support it. The problem is they did make millions of those tvs.
 

StuBurns

Banned
JodyAnthony said:
all I know is i have a Sony HDTV that I cant play my Sony Playstation 3 games in 720p on.

If Sony had never made any HDTVs that didn't support 720p, I could agree with the argument that they don't HAVE to support it. The problem is they did make millions of those tvs.

I don't see any logic to that, that's like saying all PS3 games should play on a PS2, Sony made a PS2 and now they're making products that don't work on my old out of date hardware.
 

Hcoregamer00

The 'H' stands for hentai.
Well, my friend has this problem too.

Playing 480p on these kind of televisions aren't that bad.

Just set your PS3 with 1080i and 480p on so that the PS3 will automatically switch from 1080i to 480p if the game doesn't support it.
 
stuburns said:
But why should people rely on Sony to support it? Just because most HD devices have scaling doesn't mean PS3 should have to. It's also a question of how far back do you support, there have been analogue HDTV's since the seventies, are those people any less deserving then you?

It's buyer beware when you buy new tech, 1080i is now not a popular format, 720p has become the ubiquitous current HD format. Sony never promised upscaling.



The native resolution of a game doesn't change under any circumstances, so you won't be effecting the performance. But COD4 is only 720p (it's actually only 600p upscaled).

Dude, are you employed by Sony or something, because your anti-consumer attitude is quite baffling otherwise. 1080i and 720p have been standards for HDTV since the beginning. 1080i was extremely common when the PS3 was announced. It's only recently that 1080p has become more reasonable in price and looking to take over as standard. Should Sony stop supporting 720p now too? The system is fully capable of 1080i, and upscaling between 720p and 1080i is relatively easy. Many tvs do it by themselves. There is no reason that one should have to play a game in standard def if they own an HDTV - 1080i or 720p. It is in Sony's best interest to have their games look as good as they possibly can no matter what display you own. Microsoft gets this. You should too.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Fourth Storm said:
Dude, are you employed by Sony or something, because your anti-consumer attitude is quite baffling otherwise. 1080i and 720p have been standards for HDTV since the beginning. 1080i was extremely common when the PS3 was announced. It's only recently that 1080p has become more reasonable in price and looking to take over as standard. Should Sony stop supporting 720p now too? The system is fully capable of 1080i, and upscaling between 720p and 1080i is relatively easy. Many tvs do it by themselves. There is no reason that one should have to play a game in standard def if they own an HDTV - 1080i or 720p. It is in Sony's best interest to have their games look as good as they possibly can no matter what display you own. Microsoft gets this. You should too.

I just don't agree that Sony should have to implement this.

I could see your point if it was a feature that was removed, or promised and not delivered, but people are going out and buying this consumer electronics product and complaining about features it doesn't claim to have anyway.

To me it's the same as wanting my PS3 to have a PS2 memory card reader, it should have one, there is no reason not to, Sony themselves sold over 120 million PS2's and over 100 million PS1's so presumably there are a lot of PS3 owners that would want a memory card reader. But it's not a promised or removed feature. I brought the console knowing this wasn't included, so what right do I have to complain about it.

No one made you buy a PS3, I just don't see any logic to complaining it doesn't have something it never promised to.
 
stuburns said:
But why should people rely on Sony to support it?

1) Because Sony themselves were selling those HDTVs that don't do 720p.
2) Because everybody else does.
3) Because it's good, consumer-friendly business.

If they aren't willing to fix it, they should put a sticker on every system box. "Not in High-Def on all HDTVs".
 

StuBurns

Banned
beermonkey@tehbias said:
1) Because Sony themselves were selling those HDTVs that don't do 720p.
2) Because everybody else does.
3) Because it's good, consumer-friendly business.

If they aren't willing to fix it, they should put a sticker on every system box. "Not in High-Def on all HDTVs".

1) Do you believe Sony should have to support every product they've ever made with all their future products?
2) Everyone else doesn't support PS3 games, should the PS3 do the same?
3) This I agree with.
 
1080i is one of the HD standards, with millions of tvs manufactured with it and many broadcast standards, it's highly off putting that a system so pushed for HD standards can't match such an established standard.

It's almost as bad as including no HD cables with the system.
 

DEO3

Member
Wait, this is still an issue with the PS3?

This is the main reason I didn't pick one up at launch, since mainy of the launch games wouldn't have been playable in HD on my television, I just figured I'd pick one up later when they were cheaper and all games supported 1080i... but I guess I won't be picking one up after all?
 
stuburns said:
I just don't agree that Sony should have to implement this.

I could see your point if it was a feature that was removed, or promised and not delivered, but people are going out and buying this consumer electronics product and complaining about features it doesn't claim to have anyway.

To me it's the same as wanting my PS3 to have a PS2 memory card reader, it should have one, there is no reason not to, Sony themselves sold over 120 million PS2's and over 100 million PS1's so presumably there are a lot of PS3 owners that would want a memory card reader. But it's not a promised or removed feature. I brought the console knowing this wasn't included, so what right do I have to complain about it.

No one made you buy a PS3, I just don't see any logic to complaining it doesn't have something it never promised to.

That's part of the problem - that it's not clear, and the consumer can easily come out the loser. The PS3 box doesn't say "supports 480p, 720p, and 1080p only." It is just marketed as an HD machine, which includes 1080i. You buy HD movies or watch HD television and it works on any HD set. It sucks that developers need to put in a little extra work, because there wasn't a standard HD resolution agreed upon, but that's just the way it is.

By your logic, in 5 years or so (since the PS3 is a 10 year machine) when 1080p sets are standard, it would be fine to just cut support for 720p sets as well? Not that this is feasible or likely to happen, but they could always say it still supports HD. You can't punish early adopters like that. I mean, you can, but it's just not cool.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Fourth Storm said:
That's part of the problem - that it's not clear, and the consumer can easily come out the loser. The PS3 box doesn't say "supports 480p, 720p, and 1080p only." It is just marketed as an HD machine, which includes 1080i. You buy HD movies or watch HD television and it works on any HD set. It sucks that developers need to put in a little extra work, because there wasn't a standard HD resolution agreed upon, but that's just the way it is.

By your logic, in 5 years or so (since the PS3 is a 10 year machine) when 1080p sets are standard, it would be fine to just cut support for 720p sets as well? Not that this is feasible or likely to happen, but they could always say it still supports HD. You can't punish early adopters like that. I mean, you can, but it's just not cool.

That's not the same thing, from the second the PS3 hit the standard output was 720p. If for whatever reason Sony decided to drop 720p support it would mean 95% of the current PS3 catalogue being scrapped. That would be insane, and would never happen.

And it's not that the PS3 doesn't output 1080i, it does, when the software supports it, so to say "supports 480p, 720p, and 1080p only." would be wrong because it actually supports 480i 480p 576i 576p 720i 720p 1080i 1080p, but it depends on the source.

That is the same for all the BD and HD DVD systems, the only difference is they include scalers (for the most part).

Maybe Sony should put on the box "Warning, does not include resolution scaler for PS3 games, only for Blu-Ray films, DVD's and PS1 and PS2 games (on current firmware)".

But anyone who would know what that means would more then likely be wise enough to research the product before buying it.

I'm not saying Sony shouldn't include a scaler, I think it should have been there from day one, I'm saying they shouldn't have to.
 
Culex said:
That does blow. I had thought it was fixed.

I vaguely remember some old firmware update stating as much, yeah.

And since GTA4 does do the upscaling from 720 native, my guess would be that the scalingfunction is present in the PS3 firmware, but is left into developer hands to be used / activated.
And being software, that probably takes up a good deal of effort and will impact performance -which is bad when you're on a strict deadline. From a management POV usually not worth spending resources on since most HDTV's have scalers anyway.


I wonder who then got the function into GTA4 though. Rockstar, TakeTwo, Sony/MS, or a combination of (interests in) all parties?
 

witness

Member
DEO3 said:
Wait, this is still an issue with the PS3?

This is the main reason I didn't pick one up at launch, since mainy of the launch games wouldn't have been playable in HD on my television, I just figured I'd pick one up later when they were cheaper and all games supported 1080i... but I guess I won't be picking one up after all?

Ditto, will not pick up a PS3 because of this. Its a shame because I want one but this problem shouldn't even exist. All my other HD devices output in 1080i just fine, why the hell shouldn't the PS3.
 

Rolf NB

Member
beermonkey@tehbias said:
There were millions of HDTVs sold that can't take 720p, I buoght a Sony 53" set five years ago that could not, and many high-def sets were still being sold 2-3 year ago that could not.

The people who bought these sets are just as deserving of years of usefulness as those PS3 owners that want the PS3 platform to last ten years or more. To this end, virtually every high-def source component other than the PS3 is capable of scaling 720p to 1080i.
"HDTVs", huh? So do me a favour. Download this test image and display it full-screen on your so-called "HDTV" by whatever means available to you, then tell me how many line-pairs you saw (hint: zero). Anyone else with a 1080i-only "HDTV", please, join in the fun.

Test images for a few different resolutions can be found simply by browsing the directory, so feel free to get to the bottom of all this. You'll probably find that you have bought a display designed for and capable of 576p resolution. Or IOW, you're not losing much if you feed it a 480p signal. In case of 60fps games, you're actually better off with 480p.
 
bcn-ron said:
"HDTVs", huh? So do me a favour. Download this test image and display it full-screen on your so-called "HDTV" by whatever means available to you, then tell me how many line-pairs you saw (hint: zero). Anyone else with a 1080i-only "HDTV", please, join in the fun.

Test images for a few different resolutions can be found simply by browsing the directory, so feel free to get to the bottom of all this. You'll probably find that you have bought a display designed for and capable of 576p resolution. Or IOW, you're not losing much if you feed it a 480p signal. In case of 60fps games, you're actually better off with 480p.

My RPTV was converged by David Abrams of the ISF, who worked on Digital Video Essentials with Joe Kane. Over the years I had it I was obsessive about cleaning the lenses, performing service-level convergence of all modes (480p/960i 4:3, 480p/960i 16:9, and 1080i 16:9), and getting tune-ups to recalibrate the black level, contrast, overscan, and color temperature.

1080i looks a lot better on that set than 480p. Period. Even my wife was able to easily tell 480i sources from 1080i sources on it.

Some of us know even more about this stuff than you, son, and have into HT and high-def for many more years.

I'm sure many other members here can tell 1080i from 480p on their 480p/1080i sets.
 

dogmaan

Girl got arse pubes.
Zeitgeister said:
I vaguely remember some old firmware update stating as much, yeah.

And since GTA4 does do the upscaling from 720 native, my guess would be that the scalingfunction is present in the PS3 firmware, but is left into developer hands to be used / activated.
And being software, that probably takes up a good deal of effort and will impact performance -which is bad when you're on a strict deadline. From a management POV usually not worth spending resources on since most HDTV's have scalers anyway.


I wonder who then got the function into GTA4 though. Rockstar, TakeTwo, Sony/MS, or a combination of (interests in) all parties?

Micrsoft pre reserved GPU time and memory for upscaling, thus ensuring compatibility with all HDTV's

Sony has not reserved any GPU time or Memory for upscaling and has left it up to the developer to implement if they want, i believe sony have released code for developers to use in their own engines, so dev's don't have to completely write their own Scaling algorithms

any game made since the beginning of 2007 could have had the opportunity to include upscaling on the PS3, so the blame is not entirely Sony's if a game does not support 1080i

the new firmware update is rumoured to have freed up a lot of RAM, so maybe we will see more of the older games have 1080i patched in like burnout

Also looking at the diagrams of the Toshiba super companion chip in the PS3, the diagram on page 13 shows a possible upscaling capability of the chip:

Cell-companion chip diagrams

Alas it is also possible this chip was taken out of the 40GB PS3's as the die for this chip looks a lot smaller now (possibly cut down as the companion chip has many features the PS3 would never use)
 
bcn-ron said:
"HDTVs", huh? So do me a favour. Download this test image and display it full-screen on your so-called "HDTV" by whatever means available to you, then tell me how many line-pairs you saw (hint: zero). Anyone else with a 1080i-only "HDTV", please, join in the fun.

Test images for a few different resolutions can be found simply by browsing the directory, so feel free to get to the bottom of all this. You'll probably find that you have bought a display designed for and capable of 576p resolution. Or IOW, you're not losing much if you feed it a 480p signal. In case of 60fps games, you're actually better off with 480p.

Wait, are you trying to insinuate a 1920x1080i image isn't HD simply because it's not progressive?

What?

Equating 1080i to 576p is fairly erroneous to boot, since one is an interlaced image and the other is progressive. Why do people keep bringing up a progressive resolution to explain a interlaced resolution, it defeats it's technique in the first place. You get two sets of picture information interlaced for the full moving image, not some frozen picture process midway. There is actually more information end result at 1080i than 720p.

It's not much of an argument, a 1080 source is superior to watching a 480 source, if not, might as well argue a person's not losing much with 480p than 1080p.

Seriously, one of the best looking HDtv is and still are 1080i CRT from even Sony themselves. LCD and Plasmas to still trying to catch up to the image quality of them despite them being 720/1080p.
 

M3d10n

Member
AFAIK the solution proposed by Sony is actually pretty simple. Since the built-in scaler can only upscale horizontally and is limited to vertical downscaling, the developers must change their internal resolution to anything that is 1080 pixels tall (Sony recommends 960x1080, which has 12% more pixels than 1280x720) so the game can be displayed at all available resolutions.


HomerSimpson-Man said:
Wait, are you trying to insinuate a 1920x1080i image isn't HD simply because it's not progressive?

What?

Equating 1080i to 576p is fairly erroneous to boot, since one is an interlaced image and the other is progressive. Why do people keep bringing up a progressive resolution to explain a interlaced resolution, it defeats it's technique in the first place. You get two sets of picture information interlaced for the full moving image, not some frozen picture process midway. There is actually more information end result at 1080i than 720p.
QTF. That's almost like saying there's no noticeable resolution difference between a PS2 at 480i and a PSOne at 240p.
 

MoxManiac

Member
TelemachusD said:
I think you need to read this. The PS3 is literally one of the only HD devices in existence that doesn't scale its output to the various HD resolutions.

I'm not asking for native resolution 1080i/p content, just scaling.

It's also irriating if you want to play on an 22" or 24" LCD monitor, as it won't display correct 16:9 on 16:10 (But the 360 will!)
 

CowGirl

Junior Member
dogmaan said:
Micrsoft pre reserved GPU time and memory for upscaling, thus ensuring compatibility with all HDTV's

Sony has not reserved any GPU time or Memory for upscaling and has left it up to the developer to implement if they want, i believe sony have released code for developers to use in their own engines, so dev's don't have to completely write their own Scaling algorithms

any game made since the beginning of 2007 could have had the opportunity to include upscaling on the PS3, so the blame is not entirely Sony's if a game does not support 1080i

the new firmware update is rumoured to have freed up a lot of RAM, so maybe we will see more of the older games have 1080i patched in like burnout

Also looking at the diagrams of the Toshiba super companion chip in the PS3, the diagram on page 13 shows a possible upscaling capability of the chip:

Cell-companion chip diagrams

Alas it is also possible this chip was taken out of the 40GB PS3's as the die for this chip looks a lot smaller now (possibly cut down as the companion chip has many features the PS3 would never use)

You are entirely missing the point. This is not a technical issue. It is entirely possible for the ps3 to perform these tasks, the problem is that many games don't.

What should be happening is either:

1. The operating system performs the scaling OR
2. There is a TRC that forces developers to support these resolutions
 

Spasm

Member
Yes, the PS3 is capable. Yes, it also depends on the developers. The problem is, developers have to sacrifice a bit of texture memory for a larger frame-buffer. It's not much, but when you have to shove everything into 256MB, every little bit counts.

This is also probably why a lot of developers don't use page-flipping, it would use TWICE the framebuffer memory... hence, we get tearing.

Developers are making a trade-off... Using every little bit and byte to make their games look as good as possible in magazine shots, at the expense of broader HDTV support, and silky smoothness.

I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
 

dogmaan

Girl got arse pubes.
CowGirl said:
You are entirely missing the point. This is not a technical issue. It is entirely possible for the ps3 to perform these tasks, the problem is that many games don't.

What should be happening is either:

1. The operating system performs the scaling OR
2. There is a TRC that forces developers to support these resolutions

you proceed from a false assumption. i agree with both your points

I was posting technical specs as someone argued that it wasn't possible at a decent speed because of the ROP's

and also because some people like technical stuff, and might be interested in what i say
 

_Angelus_

Banned
Spasm said:
Yes, the PS3 is capable. Yes, it also depends on the developers. The problem is, developers have to sacrifice a bit of texture memory for a larger frame-buffer. It's not much, but when you have to shove everything into 256MB, every little bit counts.

This is also probably why a lot of developers don't use page-flipping, it would use TWICE the framebuffer memory... hence, we get tearing.

Developers are making a trade-off... Using every little bit and byte to make their games look as good as possible in magazine shots, at the expense of broader HDTV support, and silky smoothness.

I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

:lol
This thread was a tragedy till you came along.
Good job.
 

LCGeek

formerly sane
Spasm said:
Developers are making a trade-off... Using every little bit and byte to make their games look as good as possible in magazine shots, at the expense of broader HDTV support, and silky smoothness.

One reason I hate marketing is because of what you said. Games aren't like food on tv from what you get in that actual store chain but because of money people put up essentially with a gigantic lie that in the end screws every consumer out their money, this is human apathy at work in the easiest way possible.

Smoothness don't happen in games because publishers are stupid and will launch a product well before polish has come in to play.

As for the comments back a bit ago upscaling sucks period and I can tell you never worked with photos to see an obvious point. You lose data period when you upscale and image and cause interpolation to fill in the date in the game why some prefer this to native is insane.. Since games largely use textures (that are mostly likely still being compressed heavily)in a conventonal matter it's beyond me why you would upscale from something that isn't half the size of the image you're going to. Upscaling is fine say you don't make more than 10-20% increase you go above that and you lose way more fidelity. Hey lets pay 2k for this nice tv and 400$ machine that can output native 1080p yet use something that isn't natively done for the resolution. The notion that gamers buy in to these hd machines with crap support for the most part is like exercising without changing your diet and then wondering why the results are ass. Upscaling only magnifies the problem not hides it or makes it more tolerable.
 

dogmaan

Girl got arse pubes.
LCGeek said:
One reason I hate marketing is because of what you said. Games aren't like food on tv from what you get in that actual store chain but because of money people put up essentially with a gigantic lie that in the end screws every consumer out their money, this is human apathy at work in the easiest way possible.

Smoothness don't happen in games because publishers are stupid and will launch a product well before polish has come in to play.

As for the comments back a bit ago upscaling sucks period and I can tell you never worked with photos to see an obvious point. You lose data period when you upscale and image and cause interpolation to fill in the date in the game why some prefer this to native is insane.. Since games largely use textures (that are mostly likely still being compressed heavily)in a conventonal matter it's beyond me why you would upscale from something that isn't half the size of the image you're going to. Upscaling is fine say you don't make more than 10-20% increase you go above that and you lose way more fidelity. Hey lets pay 2k for this nice tv and 400$ machine that can output native 1080p yet use something that isn't natively done for the resolution. The notion that gamers buy in to these hd machines with crap support for the most part is like exercising without changing your diet and then wondering why the results are ass. Upscaling only magnifies the problem not hides it or makes it more tolerable.

my LCD TV was marketed as 720p , but it has terrible vsync issues in progressive scan, where as 1080i works fine, I DID buy a tv that was supposed to be compatible

sony really should of put 1080i in the TRC because 1080i IS as fucking HD resolution
 

danwarb

Member
dogmaan said:
Micrsoft pre reserved GPU time and memory for upscaling, thus ensuring compatibility with all HDTV's

Sony has not reserved any GPU time or Memory for upscaling and has left it up to the developer to implement if they want, i believe sony have released code for developers to use in their own engines, so dev's don't have to completely write their own Scaling algorithms
The scaling hardware on Xbox 360 doesn't cut into memory and GPU time, as software scaling with shaders on PS3 might.
 
DemonCleaner said:
well how about buying a REAL hdtv?

Sony CRTs (xs955/xbr960) are still at the top of the food chain. 99% of all new display techs don't even offer the proper, and smpte standard, color management adjustments.
 
This is such a dumb thread. Arguing about how the PS3 can or can't do 1080i is completely retarded. Of course it can do 1080i, even the fucking PS2 did 1080i.
 

keyrat

Member
I agree that Sony should do something about this problem, as a service to the people using legacy hardware.

That said, I somewhat doubt the 'millions' number that's being thrown around here.
 

terrene

Banned
MidgarBlowedUp said:
This is such a dumb thread. Arguing about how the PS3 can or can't do 1080i is completely retarded. Of course it can do 1080i, even the fucking PS2 did 1080i.
I think the word "games" being in the thread title is somewhat applicable to your comment here.
 
keyrat said:
That said, I somewhat doubt the 'millions' number that's being thrown around here.

HDTV launched here in 1998. By 2002, the CEA was reporting sales of multiple millions of HDTV sets per year. Anybody who has been involved in the hobby for a long time remembers that the majority of sets prior to about 2004 were RPTV and direct-view CRTs that couldn't accept 720p, and that these were the most popular kinds of sets.

It's definitely millions.
 

muzzakus

Banned
dogmaan said:
Micrsoft pre reserved GPU time and memory for upscaling, thus ensuring compatibility with all HDTV's

Sony has not reserved any GPU time or Memory for upscaling and has left it up to the developer to implement if they want, i believe sony have released code for developers to use in their own engines, so dev's don't have to completely write their own Scaling algorithms

any game made since the beginning of 2007 could have had the opportunity to include upscaling on the PS3, so the blame is not entirely Sony's if a game does not support 1080i

the new firmware update is rumoured to have freed up a lot of RAM, so maybe we will see more of the older games have 1080i patched in like burnout

Also looking at the diagrams of the Toshiba super companion chip in the PS3, the diagram on page 13 shows a possible upscaling capability of the chip:

Cell-companion chip diagrams

Alas it is also possible this chip was taken out of the 40GB PS3's as the die for this chip looks a lot smaller now (possibly cut down as the companion chip has many features the PS3 would never use)

The 360 is not using GPU cycles to upscale, there is a seperate peice of scaling hardware to do it all. In a nutshell the 360's GPU can render in one resolution but the final video output can be a different resolution and performance is always consisten regardless as no extra work needs to be done by the GPU or CPU.

The PS3 outputs what it renders only, the result is that most devs dont bother programming different rendering strategies due to performance hits etc. as GPU itself needing to push more pixels.

The PS3 strategy is mindblowingly inedequate. And worse - it's set in stone, nothing can be done about it as that is the PS3 architecture.
 

Dunlop

Member
beermonkey@tehbias said:
There were millions of HDTVs sold that can't take 720p, I buoght a Sony 53" set five years ago that could not, and many high-def sets were still being sold 2-3 year ago that could not.

The people who bought these sets are just as deserving of years of usefulness as those PS3 owners that want the PS3 platform to last ten years or more. To this end, virtually every high-def source component other than the PS3 is capable of scaling 720p to 1080i.

This was actually the reason I brought back a PS3 my wife had purchased for me, it was from EBGames so I could not return if I opened and my TV did not do 720p and I sure as fuck was not going to play in the same resolution as my Wii......or so I thought, my original TV did not (JVC something) but when it gimped out on me I had traded up for a Hitachi that in fact did 720p.


DOH!
 
beermonkey@tehbias said:
HDTV launched here in 1998. By 2002, the CEA was reporting sales of multiple millions of HDTV sets per year. Anybody who has been involved in the hobby for a long time remembers that the majority of sets prior to about 2004 were RPTV and direct-view CRTs that couldn't accept 720p, and that these were the most popular kinds of sets.

It's definitely millions.

You adopt early, sometimes you get fucked over - deal with it.

Seriously, if some GAFers spent as much time working as they do on here complaining about the price of things (Oh, PS3 is $600! Oh, I have to buy a new TV because I bought an early model in 1998 that does 1080i but not 720p, OMG the 360 wireless adapter is $100 - OK, that is rapeage, etc) they could just buy the shit they are complaining about and then some.

This is like someone complaining that their PS3 sounds like shit through a Victrola.
 

Opiate

Member
As someone with relatively low knowledge on the subject, can someone answer me one question:

Would it cost more money to consistently support games in 1080p rather than maxing out at 720p? I assume the answer is yes, because it clearly costs more to support 420p than SD, and 720p over 420, I just want to make sure this is true before making any points.
 

epmode

Member
How the fuck are so many people supporting Sony's position here. This forum has gone insane.
King_Slender said:
This is like someone complaining that their PS3 sounds like shit through a Victrola.
megarolleyes.

High definition television displays in 1080i. If your television supports this signal, it should also support high-definition games, regardless of the console. I know this is TEH YEAR OF THE PS3 but show some goddamn objectivity for a change.
 
Opiate said:
As someone with relatively low knowledge on the subject, can someone answer me one question:

Would it cost more money to consistently support games in 1080p rather than maxing out at 720p? I assume the answer is yes, because it clearly costs more to support 420p than SD, and 720p over 420, I just want to make sure this is true before making any points.

I assume you're talking processing power, and the answer is yes. For instance, in 1080i, you only have to render every other line in each pass, then the missed lines in the next pass. In 1080p, you have to render every line in each pass (this is how I understand things) - hence more processing power needed.

That being said, some games like Resistance run in 720p and can be scaled to 1080i, but they look a little awkward at 1080i from what I hear.

High definition television displays in 1080i. If your television supports this signal, it should also support high-definition games

It does - it's just the games that don't support the TV.
 

epmode

Member
King_Slender said:
It does - it's just the games that don't support the TV.
In either case, Sony is to blame. Both for not including a universal scaling solution and, barring that, for not requiring all games released on their console to support 1080i (which, again, is the resolution of high-definition television (THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT POINT)).

Leaving important functionality decisions like that that to the developer never, ever ends well.
 

Opiate

Member
Thanks, King. In that case, isn't the real issue here economic? Obviously this isn't being supported because the base of people who not only own 1080p sets but are concerned about receiving signals of that quality is not large enough to justify the additional cost.
 

Opiate

Member
epmode said:
In either case, Sony is to blame. Both for not including a universal scaling solution and, barring that, for not requiring all games released on their console to support 1080i (which, again, is the resolution of high-definition television (THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT POINT)).

Leaving important functionality decisions like that that to the developer never, ever ends well.

Wouldn't this stymie third party support, though? I'm quite certain third parties don't want to be told they have to spend more to develop their game or they can't make it.

I don't think Sony is currently in a position in the market to make such demands.
 
King_Slender said:
You adopt early, sometimes you get fucked over - deal with it.

My post was correcting misinformation. There are millions of HDTVs that don't do 720p. There is a lot of misinformation in this thread.

King_Slender said:
That being said, some games like Resistance run in 720p and can be scaled to 1080i

More misinformation. Resistance is not one of the games with scaling.

Opiate said:
I don't think Sony is currently in a position in the market to make such demands.

960x1080 can be easily scaled by the PS3 to 1080i and 1080p; developers have made this clear. It only requires a 12.5% larger framebuffer than 720p. Developers could deal with this requirement.
 

StuBurns

Banned
beermonkey@tehbias said:
960x1080 can be easily scaled by the PS3 to 1080i and 1080p; developers have made this clear. It only requires a 12.5% larger framebuffer than 720p. Developers could deal with this requirement.

Which just results in the people who didn't adopt early and buy the wrong TV's, getting compromised games.

This argument is insane. This feature wasn't removed, it never existed.

It's like if you buy a house without a swimming pool, you have no right to call up the relater and say "What the fuck? This house still doesn't have a swimming pool!".
You brought a piece of hardware that doesn't support scaling, one that never promised scaling. If you people can't be arsed to do 2 minutes google based research that is your fault.

And I applaud the people in this thread who either didn't buy a PS3 because the lack of this feature, or replaced their TV's with a suitable model. Those are the action of a reasonable consumer in this situation.
 
PS3 once didn't even downscale Blu-ray movies to 720p tvs either and that was fixed. The line of reasoning here given if Sony didn't would be tough cookies for not buying a 1080p tv then.
 

Philthy

Member
Culex said:
That does blow. I had thought it was fixed.

There are a bunch of us waiting for a fix of some sort. It makes buying a PS3 at this point, well, pointless.

stuburns said:
But why should people rely on Sony to support it?

Because Sony is a business, and they want my money. Nintendo has my money. Microsoft has my money.

Care to take a guess why Sony doesn't have my money?

There is a good article on the 360s hardware scaler chip and the lack of one in the PS3 here.

Scott Henson said:
"We call it Ana. This is the scaling chip that's in the 360," he tells me.
 
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